2023-08-10 16:08:07
Updated Thursday, August 10, 2023 – 16:08
The oncologist Ricardo Cubedo addresses in his new book, ‘The transparent organ’ all the keys to the immune system
The doctor and researcher Ricardo Cubedo. THE WORLD Special This is how your immune system works
In March 2020, before the state of alarm came into effect, Dr. Ricardo Cubedo He sent a WhatsApp to his daughter, who was in the Netherlands concerned about the situation, explaining everything that was known about that new coronavirus at the time.
Hoaxes and misinformation were already beginning to spread, so the doctor wanted to summarize the certainties that were held at that time, with clarity and data. That 20-minute audio was just the first in a series of messages on key issues around the virus, vaccines, or the immune system.
The initiative by Cubedo, a medical oncologist and researcher at the Puerta de Hierro University Hospital and the MD Anderson Center, later became a podcast. And it is completed now with a book, ‘The transparent organ’ (Larousse)with which the doctor wants to address “the intelligence of our immune system, one of the most fascinating and unexplored systems of our body” from a close language.
Most of us know very little “that complex and hidden system that we call ‘the defenses'”, raises Cubedo. It seems invisible and works “so perfectly” that we often don’t notice its existence. But we depend to a great extent on him. And not only to protect us from external threats. It is also key to the repair of the organism, for learning or for our interaction with the environment, among other tasks.
The immune system is not only a defense
“We tend to think of immunity always in terms of battle, of attack. But for example, there is a fundamental part of immunity that is what we could call diplomacy and that has to do with tolerance. There is a critical period in childhood, between birth and three years, which in our body are created as two lists. A black list and a guest list. It is the immune system that assigns substances to one list and another. And it seems that it is essential that for these two lists to be drawn up correctly, it is necessary for the child to be exposed to what surrounds him.
“All children, in all cultures, put things in their mouths at that age. What they are doing is showing their immune system what is around them. In that sense, isolating children excessively, that all soaps are antimicrobial, an excessive protection so that they do not have contact with their environment, prevents building a healthy tolerance“, relays Cubedo.
Many people often ask how to strengthen their defenses or how to improve their immune system, but “if we have a problem, it is not low defenses, but misdirected or mutinous defenses, as in the case of autoimmune diseases by the hypothesis that we have mentioned of an excessive isolation with respect to pathogens”, points out the doctor.
“We don’t need to strengthen the defenses. We don’t need any crash plan to help them do what they have been able to do on their own since the beginning of time,” adds Cubedo.
The most effective ‘help’ for the immune system are vaccines, to whose discovery and development Cubedo dedicates an important part of the book. “According to the WHO and UNICEF, some two or three million children avoid premature death thanks to vaccination campaigns”, comments the oncologist who recalls that if Jenner and Balmistwo key figures in the development and dissemination of vaccines, would raise their heads and learn of the existence of anti-vaccine movements “they would not believe it.”
“I think there are very few people who make a lot of noise. They make a lot of dizziness and generate a residue of mistrust in people, but I think they hardly change anyone’s attitude. I don’t know anyone who has been convinced by anti-vaccines.”
The future of immunotherapy
In addition to vaccines, in recent years science has taken another important step when it comes to spurring the immune system, Cubedo stresses. It is about immunotherapy, which works “unblocking and stimulating the body’s natural defenses so that they themselves fight against diseases such as cancer.”
“There is no other treatment that has caught on so quickly. In fact, It is already a daily treatment in any oncology service.. Right now it is the fourth leg of cancer treatment along with chemotherapy, surgery and radiation therapy. And that we are still in the nursery of immunotherapy. With all certainty, the future of cancer treatment will go through immunotherapy”, he underlines.
“We still don’t really know why it works in some cases and why it doesn’t in others, how resistance to these treatments is acquired or what happens with toxicity, but much progress is being made in research,” says the scientist, who is especially optimistic. with the prospects for the future that, in this sense, the messenger RNA technology.
“It is a cheap and simple technology that could allow the antigen to be selected to measure to treat each tumor. And what happened with the Covid vaccines has meant a great advance for this line of research, because it provides a fundamental proof of concept that it works.” in the real world. I think this line of research is very interesting and what is to come we don’t even imagine.”
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